A development blog for the virtual reality software that I am working on.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Happy new year!

After a few weeks of inactivity, here is yet another report of some progress. This is the first of (at least) two major increments in functionality. Have a look a the image below, which summarizes the new features that have been integrated in the editor.

This image shows the following working features:

Timeline editor (top left): this window allows time-based compositing, which is accomplished by inserting and arranging modules on a timeline. These modules draw some 3d content on the screen. This window supports zoom/pan/undo/redo. All module code is plugin-based, so new effects can be added by copying a dll file and restarting the editor.

Color curve editor (top right): this window allows editing of color gradients that can be used in the animation.

Curve editor (bottom right): this window allows editing of curves that can be used in the animation. A spline (shown in the center graph) and a modifier (shown in the bottom graph) are combined into a final curve (shown in the top graph). By specifying parameters the behavior of both the spline and modifier can be influenced. For instance in this image the modifier is a random value; however it could also be a constant value, sawtooth, inverse sawtooth and so on.

This image shows the following incomplete features:

Node editor (bottom left): this window allows node-based compositing, which is accomplished by inserting nodes and making connections between them. This window supports zoom/pan/undo/redo. Example nodes are for instance: a 3d scene (imported from 3ds max, Maya, Blender), a postprocessing effect such as blur, a render node (either forward or deferred) and so on. Render nodes are also modules - this makes a mixture between timeline- and node-based compositing possible.

The editor now has a more or less working skeleton for all the features that it needs in order to be able to orchestrate visualizations. However one major step remains, which is the big one. Up until now the engine only supported timeline-based compositing, with all functionality encapsulated in modules. In the next week(s) this will be updated so that node-based compositing is also supported. This will be a major update; but when it is done the editor can (finally) be used again to make some real, actual productions with!